


Control

by stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:02:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27102394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: Major Winchester isn't a fan of losing control.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Control

Klinger found his superior officer (Charles would have added superior  _ life form _ , probably) on the floor of the Swamp, obviously ill, obviously fighting not to vomit into a nearby basin. Klinger stroked his back where a shirt clung, sweat-soaked. “You’ll probably feel better if you just throw up,” he informed him. 

Charles glared. 

“What? Winchester’s don’t throw up?”

“This one prefers not to, no.”

“You had a fit about snoring, too,” Klinger remembered. “What’s that all about?”

“I hate losing control.”

Klinger’s face scrunched up. “Well, what about…” he trailed off, flushed, looked away. 

“Yes?”

“ _ You know. _ ”

“I assure you that I do not.” Charles wiped sweat from his face as Klinger helped settle him into his cot. Leaving the floor behind was a minor blessing. 

“Orgasms, Major.”

Charles groaned - either at the subject or because he felt terrible - Klinger couldn’t tell, before admitting, “I have precious little knowledge on the subject.” 

Klinger knelt beside the cot and studied him as though he’d never seen him before. “You’re telling me you don’t?”

Charles cracked one eye at him. “How is this possibly fodder for conversation?”

“I like to learn things about you,” Klinger admitted. 

“Then, in answer to your inappropriate query, I can and have but rarely  _ do _ .”

“How come?”

“In this awful place? My hands are often far too sore. Hours of surgery will take its toll. Or, if they are not, I am too tired. To say nothing of the lack of privacy.”

Klinger decided to roll the dice. “Next time, let me.”

_ That _ got both of the Major’s eyes to open. “Klinger!”

“What? Then it’s not  _ you _ losing control, right? ‘Cause you hate that. Then it’s  _ me  _ making you come.” 

“That is incredibly vulgar, Max.”

Klinger shrugged. “You could use a little vulgar. Maybe a lot.”

“Are you doing this because you know this fever has rendered me quite helpless to fight with you?”

“You’re fighting me fine.” He rested the back of his hand against his forehead. “101, probably. Didja take anything?”

“Of course,  _ doctor _ Klinger. That is one of the reasons I would prefer not to throw up. Medicine works very poorly when it is separated from the body for which it is intended.” 

“Just trying to help, Major.” He rearranged the man’s blankets, toweling sweat from his neck. 

“Does nothing bother you?” Charles couldn’t help but ask. He didn’t like dealing with his own sweat, never mind someone else’s. 

“Nothing about you,” Klinger returned, trying to make him more comfortable.

_ That is strangely… sweet _ . “No one ever touches me here,” he heard himself say. 

Klinger made a strange sound high in his throat. “Please say that was an invitation, sir.”

Charles had more than half thought Klinger had been joking when he’d made his early offer (wasn’t it the sort of thing  _ Pierce _ would joke about, after all?), but it now seemed that might not be the case. “You require one?”

“With you? Yeah. I’m not out to scare you.”

_ How terribly curious _ , Charles thought, amused. “You truly imagine that you can?”

“I think I do all the time. Least if you throw up this time, I don’t hafta take it personal.”

Charles was feeling well enough to swat at him. “Do not insult yourself in that way. It is hardly merited. You do not frighten me, Corporal.”

“The first day we met?” Klinger challenged.

“That was  _ surprise,  _ you dolt, not fear.”

“Well you  _ shouldn’t  _ be afraid of me, anyway,” Klinger told him. “I’d be so sweet for you, Major. I’d do whatever you want.”

This was a type of sincerity Charles was not prepared to hear, never mind process. So he deflected, taking refuge in the back and forth that usually typified his relationship with Klinger. “You never do what anyone wants.” 

“You’ve just never  _ seen  _ it. Come on, Charles. What do you need to feel better? Where do you want me to touch you?”

Miserable as he was feeling, Charles felt a prickle of desire at so direct an ask. “Why would you wish to? I am a mess.”

Klinger was ready with an answer, making Charles think he’d put some thought into this. “You’re my favorite disaster, sir. Have been since you got here. I liked you when you made a mess with those amphetamines (Radar didn’t) and I liked you better when you didn’t let the Captain’s pranks get to you. When you wear that white army scarf or call me Max or let anybody see just how nice you are, I’m plain old in love.” He said all this without dropping his eyes. 

“You are quite serious?”

“Sure, Major. I’ve got everything to gain with the truth and this is probably the only way I’ll ever get to say it. You’re feeling too low to walk out on me.”

Charles shivered as his fever ticked upward, burrowing deeper into the blankets. “You also have everything to lose,” he cautioned the Corporal. 

“Can’t lose what I don’t have,” Klinger pointed out. Then he looked worried. “Unless you’re done talking with me at all, Major?”

Charles shook his head. “I fear that I would miss it,” he admitted. “Vulgarity and all.”

This was very encouraging. “Maybe I can find something vulgar you’d like. If I told you that I dream about you coming into my tent and starting to undress me - how's that?”

It was no conventional bedtime story, Charles thought, but no one who had known Klinger for longer than a few minutes would ever call the man conventional. “Starting to?” he queried. “Are your fantasies as prone to the interruption of choppers as everything else in this place?”

“Nope. You saying I can keep talking, Major?”

“I’ve yet to see the force capable of quieting you.”

Klinger silently rejoiced. He might never get to snuggle in beside Charles, but he could at least  _ try _ to get him thinking about how nice it would be if he let him. “I try to help you,” he looked away, abashed at how forward he was about to be, “but you just say ‘shh,’ and my pants are already open ‘cause I sleep that way, anyway, and you just unzip yours and press right into me, right against me.”  _ And you’re so big and you feel  _ **_so_ ** _ good…  _

It wasn’t really so very vulgar, Charles decided, listening. It was actually kind of sweet. When Klinger stopped there, he couldn’t help asking, “That would be enough for you?” His fevered brain seemed to want to add “my dear Max” at the end of this, but he vetoed this. 

“Your voice would be enough - are you kidding?”

Speaking suddenly felt like a very self-conscious act in which to be engaged. “My voice?”

“Yeah. It’s hot. Why do you think I argue with you all the time?” 

“Boredom?”

“Sexual tension.” He decided a little teasing was in order and added, “So would you ever be brave enough to do it, Major? Climb on top of me?”

“Klinger, I am in the process of dying of some foreign illness. Do not hasten my exit, please.”

“Not tonight,” the Corporal clarified. “But sometime? Don’t scientists think there are other universes or dimensions or something? Maybe in one of them? Come on, Major. I need something  _ good _ to dream about for a change.”

“Twit.”

Klinger flashed beseeching eyes. 

“Fine. Perhaps. Will that satisfy you?”

It would - at least until Charles actually  _ did _ show up in his bunk, or, barring that, in his dreams. “Sure. Thanks, Major. So what can we do tonight? Lemme get a cool rag. Your fever’s up again. I can tell by looking at you.”

“You would do that?”

“Sure. That’s basic comfort. I’m good at that.”

If he had not been so very ill Winchester never would have admitted what he said next. “No one has ever offered me that before.”

Klinger frowned, but quickly assembled the items that would help him to feel better: a wash cloth, menthol to rub on his aching neck and temples, chapstick for his dried lips. “I can get some ginger ale from Rosie’s if your stomach is still sick. Unless you want tea,” he said after doing what he could. 

“How do you know how to do all this?” Charles couldn’t help asking. 

“It’s just what I’d want someone to do for me. You’ve seen me in post op. I’m a good little nurse.”

_ Good, yes. And very, very lovely.  _ “Tea would be nice. Thank you, Max.”

It was nice - and Klinger took care of him until he was well. 

***

When Charles had been without a fever for 96 hours, he approached the pretty Corporal. “Leave your tent unlocked tonight if you would,” he said quietly, without any change in inflection. 

“Okay. Why?”

The surgeon merely lifted one eyebrow. 

“Major? You’re serious!?”

“You wish to decline?” 

“God no. I just don’t know how I can focus on anything else now.” 

Charles surprised him with a teasing look. “Try planning your outfit. What will look best when I drop it onto the floor of your tent?” 

Klinger stared after his retreating form, then made a sound of frustrated longing… before doing exactly what the Major had suggested. 

***

That night, the Corporal’s nerve ends sang as he dressed in something he wanted Charles to admire. The blush pink top hooked around his neck on a thin wire collar that was painted gold; it still probably wasn’t ritzy enough for a Winchester, but it was pretty. He went with his softest pair of fatigues for bottoms; he wanted to feel them ride and shift when the Major…  _ Allah and Buddha and Shaboom be praised… I musta done something right once if he’s going to…  _ the thought dissolved into an internal moan. 

But then his anxiety kicked in. Maybe this was just Winchester paying him back (the man saw too much of life, in Klinger’s opinion, as a transaction) for his care.  _ Damn it. Now I hafta tell him no _ . He  _ really  _ didn’t want to, either. Didn’t he deserve just a little comfort? 

“I can see how wide your eyes are from here,” an amused voice said then. Klinger hadn’t even heard the door open. “Shall I be flattered or concerned?” 

“Hey, Major.” His voice sounded strangled. He heard the door pushed closed, locked as it hadn’t been all night. 

“Will you call me that even as you sigh beneath me, I wonder, ‘Corporal?’” the other man teased and Klinger hated what he was about to say because Charles sounded  _ so good _ saying “beneath me,” and it was  _ exactly  _ where he wanted to be. 

“I think…” Klinger clutched at the bedclothes he’d tried to tidy. “I think I’m ‘sposed to turn you down, sir.”

A pale brow rose. “Oh? Have I failed to live up to your imaginings so quickly?”

Helpless to hide his feelings (hell - what would be the point  _ now _ !?), Klinger looked him up and down with something that was equal parts admiration, wanting, and pure infatuation. “Yeah, right. It’s just… I think it’s the right thing. You’re here ‘cause you feel like  _ it’s _ the right thing because of some kinda upper class code… and I bet you don’t like it anymore than you like throwing up. It’s nice of you, really, and you could probably make me cry just by playing with my hair a little… but I don’t want it if it’s payback.” He decided to be braver, still - braver than he had yet been called to be in Korea. “If you ever want to, though, for yourself, well, I’ll be here.”

Charles smiled at him then and Klinger thought it was a different kind of smile than he’d ever seen from the man. “Maxwell, you do impress me.”

“Huh?” 

“Everyone in this camp endeavors to bend the rules to suit themselves. It is difficult to blame them, given the hell of the OR. Yet, we call you a schemer and you have more integrity than the rest of us combined.”

“Even you?”

“You know the spectacular gaffes I have made since arriving here. Surely you do not require their recital?”

“Those were just times when you got really scared, Major, or really sad.” The thing with the French girl had made  _ him  _ sad, too… though for different reasons. 

“Maxwell, is there a time here, in this place, when you are not scared?”

He couldn’t think of one. “I guess not.” 

“And do you imagine that there is any chance that my holding onto you could mitigate some of that fear?” 

Klinger dropped his eyes, chagrined. “I, uh, I don’t know that one, Major.”

Charles didn’t understand at first. 

“That word.”

“Mitigate? It means to lessen, Max. To temper or diminish.” 

“Oh. Then, yeah. I’m less afraid with you, sure. But I don’t think that’s a fair reason to ask you to uh… you know.” 

“I would be very honored, Maxwell, to make you feel safe. Would that be an acceptable starting point?”

He thought about it. 

“You took care of me,” Charles reminded him. 

“I don’t think sick is the same thing as scared, though.”

“Scared may well be worse. Now, order me back out into the dark if you wish,” but he crossed the tent as he said it and sat on the edge of his cot. “Or put the lamp out and come here.” 

Klinger sighed. It wasn’t like this was ever going to happen again. He’d been shipped to basic training right out of high school, then shipped to a place he couldn’t find on a map. Didn’t he deserve to find out if Charles’ skin was as warm and soft as he imagined? Then Charles’ voice came, teasing, making the back of his neck prickle. “I could order  _ you _ , you know, Corporal.”

Max couldn’t keep back the wanting little sound he made. 

Charles had never tried anything like this, but he thought of OR, thought of demanding 3-0 silk in OR. “Come here, Corporal.”

It almost made Klinger jump, he smiled to see; it  _ definitely _ left him balanced on shaky knees. Charles was more than happy to shore him up with a hand at his waist. His other hand slid up his chest, his throat, caught his chin. “Good girl, Max.” 

“ _ Major! _ ” 

Charles chuckled and pulled him into the cot. “You did say you liked my voice, darling.”

Klinger had his head tucked into his shoulder, hiding a blush. “Maybe I shouldn’t’ve,” he mumbled. 

“Allow me to convince you, my pretty one.” 

Klinger had never been kissed so gently or so well. It was the gentleness that had him shaking, though. He hadn’t known how badly he wanted or needed it and he would have liked to ask Charles how  _ he _ knew, but maybe those X-ray hands worked on pretty pink tops, too. Charles kissed him right down into the mattress, playing with the soft hair that fanned out around his face, walking fingers up hip bones that would not still. He had no way of knowing what Max was thinking, but he could tell, by feel, that his pretty Corporal had nothing on beneath the pants he wore. 

He remembered the fantasy that Max had spun for him. It was so easy compared to the magic he was usually trying to coax from his hands, and he did let Max help with his belt because the feel of his clever hands was too good to extricate himself from. 

Nor were those hands  _ just _ clever. Max mapped him with touches that bordered on some kind of visceral worship - and he didn’t shy from places that Charles, himself, was given to avoid. He would have accused the pretty thing of quiet flattery, but Max’s eyes were too soft for that, the sounds he made too entirely sincere; that voice of his held all that he felt for the man he was happily memorizing and all that he  _ was _ . Charles was coming to the realization that some part of what seemed to make up the gentle thing moving and shifting under him was Klinger’s attachment… to  _ him _ . 

_ Brave and beautiful _ . 

And his to please - complete with a script that Max had handed him, he was sure of it, with no hope for it ever actually being realized. As it was, head thrown back, shoulders rising, he couldn’t help making happy little sounds. Charles didn’t need to ask, but he wanted to see if Max could still talk. “This pleases you?”

“Yeah. Major?”

“Yes, my dear?”

“Are you wet too? I can’t tell if it’s just me.”

_ From brave to brazen _ . He liked it more than he would have guessed, let it inspire him. “It is not just you, pet.” He dipped his fingers inside, grazed the slit. “Here.”

Max took the offered finger in his mouth, tasted him for the first time. The surgeon pulled his bottom lip down, smearing it. 

“God,  _ Charles _ !”

Praise would have moved him anyway, but Max’s need…  _ I will never be able to tell you no _ , he thought, giddy with the realization.  _ You sound far too perfect to refuse.  _ He hurried to answer, to offer all that the Corporal’s voice asked him for - not because he wished the act to end, but because he needed to see what it looked like when Maxwell Klinger lost control - for him. 

He knew how to make it happen, too - knew it right through to the center of himself, felt it beating hard in his mind, sounding under his pulse. “I love you, Max.”

The Corporal's dark eyes flew open and if he had possessed breath to ask it, Charles was sure he would have been asking how this had happened and what it meant and something like, “Please, Major baby, will you stay?” and what was Boston like, really - but other concerns overrode these questions and he just managed his new love’s name. The sound of him mingled with the feel and look of him and Charles proved that there were times when he really enjoyed losing control, after all. 

It flattered the surgeon to see that he was the first to come back down; Max’s chest was still heaving when he drew him close and covered him up and waited for all of the questions he couldn’t wait to answer and all the promises he couldn’t wait to make - and keep. 

End! 

  
  
  
  



End file.
